Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

“The Redfield Girls” by Laird Barron

Yesterday Rena Mason, Kate Jonez and I visited the podcast Bourbon Lounge to talk about our recent books and Women in Horror Recognition Month. At one point Kate raised a question about men writing female characters and women writing male characters. Today, as I continue to think of instances in which stories have succeeded or failed in portraying gender, I recall “The Redfield Girls” by Laird Barron.

The most striking thing about the story would be worth mentioning regardless of the author’s gender. “The Redfield Girls” are women, schoolteachers, in late middle age. They appear on the first page fully formed, with areas of professional expertise, travel and relationship experience, living and deceased loved ones, idiosyncrasies, signs of time passing. They are complete individuals who argue and enjoy one another’s company. And they are women. How often does that happen in fiction? Not bloody often.

One reason we’re not surprised when elected officials go all gooey-brained about female anatomy and medical realities might be our general tendency to mystify womanhood. We are from Venus and we have special needs. Don’t cross us. We can lift cars with our bare hands, to save a child.

Don’t get me wrong. Women are mighty. Where I come from, anyway. But they’re mighty because they work and keep families going and put food on the table and pay the rent on time. Not because they’re from another planet that men can never understand. Barron invests his female characters with as much complexity as his male characters, simultaneously demystifying their nature and deepening our investment in their fate.

“The Redfield Girls” have lived. During their annual fall road trip, we get to know Bernice, Karla, Dixie, and Li-Hua. We discover their strengths, their vulnerabilities and superstitions. They’re joined by Lourdes, Bernice’s seventeen-year-old niece. In the eerie night the women share with Lourdes the true crime stories and legends both modern and ancient surrounding Lake Crescent, where they’ve rented a cabin. One tale of murder is taken from Bernice’s family history.

Bernice is a woman going about her business, too practical to give in, every day, to grief. Her husband’s death doesn’t haunt her so much as it forms a cornerstone to the foundation on which the rest of her life will be constructed. She bristles at having to watch over her sister’s daughter during her last days of vacation before the new school term.

The author’s realistic depiction of the women serves as a sharp contrast to the lonesome and spooky setting. Bernice is plagued by nightmares and her uneasiness is fueled by contact with the lake:

“Bernice perched in the bow, soon mesmerized by the slap of the oar blades dipping into the glassy surface, their steady creak in the metal eye rings…. She was disquieted by the sensation of floating over a Hadal gulf, an insect prey to gargantuan forms lurking in the depths.”

The women attempt to control the element causing “disquiet,” with unfortunate but not tragic consequences. Tragedy occurs later, when they ignore the signs and warnings they’ve experienced.

The author expertly conveys the lurking danger of inevitable mortality and grief. His stories almost always offer settings of great texture, described not minutely but with perfect specificity and layered with historical scars. We’re lured into this complex world long before we meet the first intriguing implausibility. By then we’re committed to our strange journey.

In “The Redfield Girls” we must accompany Bernice from a state of emotional arrest in widowhood to the terrible awareness that nature can and will take everything, eventually. Our desires and our sense of purpose are always threatened with obliteration. Such epic themes are frequently tied, in fiction, to male action adventure. By weaving them into a story about four middle-aged female schoolteachers, Barron succeeds in making their power and significance ubiquitous. The cosmic forces at work here, if they have direction or will, are not bothered by anything human, be it man or woman. From Mars or Venus.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.